chavismo

Reinaldo Iturriza is a Venezuelan intellectual and writer who served as Minister of Communes (2013-14) and Culture (2014-16). He currently heads the Socialist Democracy Studies Center (CEDES) in Caracas. In this interview with Diario Red, Iturriza offers his views on the present Venezuelan context, the US’ January 3 invasion and subsequent impositions, the phenomenon of political disaffiliation and the importance of organizing a counter-offensive.

Although US aggression against Venezuela has been going on for decades, what happened on January 3, 2026, was an unprecedented and, to some extent, disconcerting event. This is because of the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, but also because it wasn’t a coup d’État, at least not according to the White House’s usual playbook, which involves a change in the government’s political alignment. What is your analysis of what happened that day?

What happened that day was an invasion, in every sense of the word. A flagrant and criminal violation of our sovereignty, preceded by constant threats and provocations, as well as the murder of dozens of fishermen in the Caribbean Sea – to which must be added the hundred Venezuelan military personnel and Cuban internationalists responsible for the president’s security who fell in combat during those early morning hours.

Regarding the shift in the government’s political alignment, the first thing this outcome reveals, in my view, is that it is absolutely false that the US aggression was motivated by anything even remotely related to its concern for democracy, just as the siege immediately preceding it had nothing to do with the Venezuelan government’s alleged ties to drug trafficking.

It is clear that the US government acted out of an interest in regaining control of our strategic resources, starting with our oil. Additionally, while weighing options and considering possible scenarios, the US concluded that the least traumatic way to achieve that objective was to leave the government structure virtually unchanged.

How did we reach this critical juncture?

Only someone completely unversed in politics would dare to claim that we should thank the United States for taking the first decisive steps to free us from a “tyranny” that had been in power for 25 years and that, otherwise, might have persisted indefinitely.

I mention this because Venezuelan society is not exactly known for its apolitical nature. What I’m getting at is that this is a narrative that is not only self-serving but also very dangerous, seeking to defend the indefensible. It is a version of events that is stumbling its way forward and aspires to become common sense. That is why it is essential to block its path once and for all.

And this requires emphasizing that throughout the first decade of this century, and even during the first half of the past decade, Venezuela was characterized as a high-intensity democracy, with very notable advances in all aspects of the material and spiritual lives of the popular majorities. What needs to be understood is what has happened here over the last 10 years.

When did the turning point occur? What circumstances led to the erosion of our high-intensity democracy? 

It seems to me that Antonio Gramsci provides invaluable analytical insights to begin understanding this historical development. What we witnessed and endured was nothing other than what the Italian intellectual calls the “reciprocal destruction” of the forces in conflict, with the consequent deterioration of democratic life and the progressive weakening of the political class and its respective social bases of support.

It is in this context that the intervention of the “foreign guard” took place on January 3, to continue using Gramscian terminology. A “foreign guard” that, incidentally, played a leading role in the conflict, decisively supporting one of the forces [the Venezuelan opposition] and doing everything possible to undermine the foundations of the national economy.

As the weeks went by, it became clear that the government of Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has largely accepted the conditions imposed by the United States. Is this a “betrayal,” or is it a tactical retreat aimed at sustaining the Bolivarian Process in the long term?

Speaking in terms of betrayal or loyalty to the cause contributes little or nothing to understanding the situation. Opinions one way or the other are part of what Gramsci himself described as “petty political criticism.” Nor, it must be said, does the abuse of historical analogies aid in this regard.

I clearly recall that regarding the government’s rapprochement with certain factions of the bourgeoisie throughout 2016, and later in connection with the implementation of the orthodox monetarist program in 2018 – aimed primarily at controlling hyperinflation, which meant, among other things, reducing public spending to unprecedented levels and freezing wages – some comrades asked me in good faith whether this was something akin to Lenin’s New Economic Policy or whether, on the contrary, we were witnessing the abandonment of the strategic programmatic banners of the Bolivarian Revolution.

I would almost invariably tell them that what was needed was an analysis of the balance of power and that, regardless of how one chose to characterize it, the indisputable fact is that a recomposition of the ruling bloc was taking place: the working class, slowly but surely, ceased to be the backbone of that power bloc, as it undoubtedly had been throughout the Hugo Chávez era and even during Maduro’s early years.

Since January 3, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk has been invoked to try to explain the reasons behind the rapprochement with the US government, much in the same way that anything was previously justified by invoking Stalin’s defeat of fascism because we were facing the far right.

It is paradoxical that over the past 10 years we were able to find ourselves in the situation of the Soviet Union in March 1921, then in May 1945, and finally in March 1918, yet today, following one tactical retreat after another, the Bolivarian Process is hardly in a better position to face the future.

In retrospect, the facts seem to point to a structural retreat or, more precisely, a full-fledged strategic retreat.

A few days after January 3, you wrote an article in which you noted that the public reaction following the kidnapping [of Maduro and Flores] was one of “silence.” At that initial moment, there were no celebrations by the opposition, nor were there pro-government demonstrations; instead, a mood of “mourning for the humiliated nation” prevailed. And you made a very interesting point by arguing that “far from signifying consent with what had happened,” it was a manifestation of dissent that could find no “means of expression.” This is striking given the narrative of polarization that has surrounded Venezuela for years, which seems to encompass the entire society, dividing it between Chavistas and anti-Chavistas. Is there a vacuum of political representation?

Indeed, quite contrary to the prevailing narratives, Venezuelan society over the last 10 years has become increasingly depolarized, or perhaps we should work with the hypothesis that polarization has taken on new contours: the majority of the population versus its political class.

On several occasions, I have argued that during this period, no political phenomenon has been more significant and with more far-reaching implications than political disaffiliation. And this is by no means a recent “discovery”; I first raised this point in December 2015, in the context of the opposition’s parliamentary election victory.

When we analyzed the situation in depth, it became clear that the defeat of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) stemmed from the fact that, in Chavismo’s electoral strongholds, there had been a protest vote against the government.

It is no small matter that, despite the historical and contextual differences, that 2015 defeat, as was the case on January 3, was not celebrated by the people. That protest vote reflected a demand for correction.

In the eyes of a very significant portion of the social base supporting the Bolivarian Revolution, that correction did not occur. Quite the contrary: it was precisely from that point on that this process of recomposition of the power bloc I have already referred to began or intensified.

Why do you think this political disaffiliation occurred?

I am working on the hypothesis that the massive disaffiliation from Chavismo – understood here as a political identity – is directly proportional to the gradual distancing of the official political class from its working-class origins. In other words, to the extent that political identity ceased to embody the interests of the popular majorities, they ceased to feel represented by that political identity.

What occurred was what René Zavaleta Mercado termed a political and ideological hollowing out of the popular classes. This hollowing out, incidentally, should not be confused with depoliticization. The concept refers rather to the fact that the main guiding ideas that organize and give meaning to the way we conceive of the political are no longer associated with a specific identity.

This is particularly evident among younger people: my generation (and even more so the generations that preceded us) often laments the depoliticization of youth. And yes, there is depoliticization. But it is not uncommon to strike up a conversation with a young person from the working class in their twenties and realize that several of the key ideas that historically defined Chavismo are still there, yet those ideas have no political expression today.

In any case, I must emphasize that this phenomenon is far from being exclusively limited to young people. In reality, it describes the situation of the vast majority of Venezuelan society. A majority that does not condone something like a foreign invasion, but that cannot find ways to express its deep discontent with the state of affairs.

In your role as Minister of Communes between 2013 and 2014, but also as an activist and intellectual, you have been involved in the process of organizing and building the communes. This is a novel form of popular organization proposed by the Bolivarian Revolution and particularly by Hugo Chávez. For those unfamiliar with the topic, what are the communes? What is their objective?

The communes, and before them the communal councils, can be understood as the political formula devised by the Bolivarian leadership, and in particular by Hugo Chávez, to organize fundamentally that segment of the working class that came to constitute the backbone of the movement: the subproletariat, understood as the working poor whose labor does not guarantee them sufficient means to ensure their reproduction as a labor force.

Elsewhere I have elaborated in greater detail on what I am now only touching upon very briefly: the subproletariat was the driving force behind the popular uprising of February 27, 1989, [known as the Caracazo]. During the 1990s, under neoliberalism, the subproletariat came to represent the largest segment of the Venezuelan working class.

Excluded from the market, politics, and citizenship, it became politicized under Chávez’s leadership. It did everything possible to bring him to power. It defended democracy when it was threatened by the elites and led the massive street demonstrations that succeeded in reversing the 2002 coup d’état. Months later, it was on the front lines of resistance against the strike-sabotage of the oil industry and the corporate lockout: the Bolivarian Revolution would not be defeated by hunger and unemployment.

In a country on the brink of economic ruin [in 2002-03], we witnessed the recovery of the oil industry and experienced the effects of the first attempts at the democratic redistribution of oil rents – an experience that was entirely foreign to the more recent subproletariat.

Citizenship and the market were no longer off-limits: they gained gradual access to healthcare, education, and food. Their neighborhoods began to appear on official maps. Millions were able to obtain an identity card for the first time. They achieved their most resounding political victory in the 2004 referendum, which decided whether Chávez would remain in power.

In 2005, the Bolivarian leadership faced the challenge of how to organize a sub-proletariat that, by definition, is not in the factory, that due to its political culture distrusts the more traditional forms of political representation, and that also demonstrates a strong inclination toward political experimentation.

The answer, broadly speaking, was that it was necessary to promote the creation of popular self-government in the territories; this self-government had to, among other things, identify the productive potential of those territories and organize itself to develop that potential.

It was in this context that the first community councils were established. Later, in 2008, in areas where the self-governance initiatives were deemed to have the greatest political potential, efforts were intensified with the pilot launch of the first communes.

The communes were conceived as spaces with relative autonomy. This means that they were not to be subordinate to any formal power, nor were they to function as small, self-sufficient communities – like tiny islands in the sea of capitalism.

In Chávez’s words, they were to be capable of organizing themselves in a networked manner, “like a gigantic spiderweb covering the territory of the future, but in no case outside the strategic horizon of the Bolivarian Revolution.” In this sense, they represented a kind of popular vanguard in the process of implementing the program of transformation in the territory.

What is the current state of communal organization in Venezuela compared to previous years? How has the process been affected in recent years?

That’s a good question, especially since it has become customary in recent years to point to the existence of the communes as a kind of political – and even ethical – bulwark that could eventually serve as a counterweight to more authoritarian or conservative tendencies within Chavismo.

As a sort of consolation: we admit that things aren’t going very well, to say the least, and it’s equally true that the outlook isn’t encouraging at all, but at least the communes exist.

However, we must emphasize a few points I’ve already mentioned: the last 10 years have been a time of recomposition of the ruling bloc, of massive political disaffiliation, and of an economic policy that does not prioritize the interests of the working class. These are times of managing the status quo, which means that the scope for political experimentation has been reduced to historic lows.

To this, of course, we must add that after January 3, it is the US government that ultimately administers and decides how our revenues are spent. In other words, the problem is no longer even the scope of action of the communes, but rather the scope of the republic’s sovereignty.

This issue of the communes’ relative autonomy presents itself to us today in a radically different context: it remains to be seen whether, beyond the ability to manage very limited resources for the implementation of very limited local projects, communal leadership has the will and capacity to reaffirm its autonomy – no longer in the face of state or party institutions, but primarily in the face of a “foreign guard” that seeks to decide the nation’s fate.

Regarding the latter point you mentioned, Donald Trump’s offensive against Latin America, within a global context of military escalation and the rise of the far right, presents a very complex scenario for leftist governments, movements, and organizations. Added to the aggression against Venezuela is the intensification of the blockade against Cuba and the pressure on progressive governments in the region. How do you see the future of Chavismo and the Bolivarian Revolution in this context?

Let me refer once again to Gramsci: the analysis I have attempted here is not an end in itself. Its purpose is not to demonstrate clarity, eloquence, or anything of the sort. Such an analysis only makes sense if it aims to create the conditions for “optimism of the will.” 

The global onslaught of the far right cannot be met with voluntarism or naive pragmatism. There is no more effective incentive than developing the capacity to conduct analyses of the balance of power that are as rigorous and unflinching as possible. In times of retreat, the priority must be on organizing the counteroffensive. And such a thing is impossible based on complacent analyses or those aimed at reaffirming our status as victims.

In the battle of ideas, it is imperative to construct an effective narrative regarding the Bolivarian Revolution. One that does not shy away from pointing out our mistakes or limitations, but at the same time – and drawing on abundant historical evidence – properly highlights our numerous successes, starting with the fact that we managed to outline a programmatic vision that the popular majority embraced, feeling for the first time in a long while that they were masters of their own destiny.

The current state of affairs is not the inevitable consequence of an anachronistic program –one alien to our ideas and customs –that carried within it the seeds of authoritarianism from the very beginning. On the contrary, our program was well-suited to its time, consistent with our political culture, and realized itself as a high-intensity democracy. We must account for the multiple causes of various kinds that led to the interruption of the process of implementing that program.

This must take place within the context of a profound crisis of political representation, so we will most likely have to be prepared to witness – and even foster – the emergence of a new political identity that does not renounce its national, popular, and anti-capitalist character.

In the short term, what is essential is the convergence of all forces of different stripes that oppose the imposition of conditions of tutelage on our nation. We are on the threshold of new battles to recover our full sovereignty. This is only just beginning.

Source: Diario Red

A new economic partner?

Libertad Velasco, a Chavista who grew up in the 23 de Enero neighbourhood, was only a teenager when Chavez came to power.

She went on to become one of the founding members of the youth wing of Chavez’s party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Eventually, she became the head of a government agency to expand access to higher education to members of vulnerable communities.

Still, Velasco described the period after Maduro’s abduction as a sort of awakening.

“It’s like we’re looking at ourselves without makeup,” Velasco said. “Now, everything is laid bare, revealed in its purest state, and we are beginning to recognise ourselves again.”

Since the US attack and Maduro’s removal, Velasco has thought deeply about her “red lines”: the ideals she feels should not be violated under the new government.

Standing up against invasive foreign powers remains one of her top priorities.

“I refuse to be colonised,” Velasco said. “For me, we shouldn’t have relations with Israel, and abandoning anti-imperialism is non-negotiable.”

Yet Velasco does not believe that the Venezuelan government has crossed that line yet. Rather, she is open to the prospect of the US as a trading partner to Venezuela, paying for access to its natural resources.

“It is a customer who should pay market price for the product they need. If Venezuela must act as a market player to lift people out of suffering, I can go along with that,” Velasco said.

But it is unclear whether that is happening. Critics point out that the Trump administration has demanded greater control over Venezuela’s natural resources. It has even claimed that Chavez stole Venezuelan oil from US hands.

Already, Venezuela has surrendered nearly 50 million barrels of oil to the US, with the Trump administration splitting the proceeds between the two countries.

Rodriguez, Venezuela’s interim president, has also agreed to submit a monthly budget to the US for approval.

Among Chavistas, there remains debate about whether the relationship with the US is beneficial or exploitative.

But economic recovery is an overwhelming priority for many Venezuelans of all political leanings. Under Maduro, Venezuela entered one of its worst economic crises in history. Inflation is currently at 600 percent, and living standards remain low.

Many Chavista loyalists blame US sanctions for their economic woes. Yet, analysts credit a combination of factors, including declining oil prices, economic mismanagement and pervasive corruption.

Delia Bracho, 68, lives in a district of Caracas called Caricuao, where water is delivered just once a week. Once a committed Chavista, she said her faith in the movement has faded.

Today’s movement, she explained, has been “ruined”, and she no longer wants anything to do with it.

“It’s like when you put on a pair of shoes,” she said. “They break, and you throw them away. Are you going to pick them up again, knowing they are no longer useful?”

Despite her initial fear after the US intervention, Bracho said she now feels cautiously optimistic that Venezuela might change for the better.

“It’s not that everything is fixed, but there is a different atmosphere — one of hope.”

The early morning of January 3, 2026, marked a turning point in Venezuela’s recent history. An operation carried out by US forces combined airstrikes on Caracas and strategic military areas with a ground incursion that culminated in the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and their subsequent rendition to New York. The operation left more than 90 dead, including 32 members of the Cuban special forces who fought to protect Maduro, inflicting some damage on the imperialist forces before being killed.

While it is certainly strange that the United States could carry out the operation to kidnap Maduro and his wife without encountering significant resistance—beyond that offered by the innermost security ring, most of whom were of Cuban origin, like the aforementioned 32 martyrs—perhaps even more surprising are the statements made by Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López. Weeks after Maduro’s kidnapping, Padrino asserted that it was impossible to deploy fighter jets at the time of the attack given the United States’ air superiority, with 150 aircraft. He thus acknowledged that, with the exception of the president’s personal guard and a few soldiers stationed near the residence, the Venezuelan Armed Forces did not respond to the imperialist aggression. 

We cannot speculate on military matters, since we are not experts and do not have all the necessary information on the issue. That falls outside our purview. In any case, Padrino López’s own words and the events that unfolded during the attack indicate that, for some reason or another, the decision was made not to respond militarily to the Delta Force attack in the early hours of January 3 in Caracas. 

To the surprise of many, Maduro’s abduction did not lead to an immediate or complete institutional collapse. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez assumed the interim presidency, backed by the Supreme Court and the National Assembly, headed by Jorge Rodríguez. This “two-pronged approach” allowed for a certain degree of formal stability to be maintained while the administration of the country’s strategic resources was reorganized and the implementation of policies to adapt to the new context was accelerated.

Coordination with Washington was immediate. On January 15, CIA Director John Ratcliffe – who just days earlier had overseen the aggressive operation alongside Donald Trump in Florida – visited Caracas and met with Delcy Rodríguez. A few days later, the reform of the Organic Law on Hydrocarbons was presented and approved. This timeline reveals an almost symbiotic alignment between Venezuelan authorities and the US administration aimed at ensuring that oil wealth flows under the empire’s supervision, while simultaneously safeguarding the interests of large corporations and international creditors. Whether this link is the result of betrayal or capitulation is, for now, irrelevant. However, what is becoming clearer every day is that, if this were a tactical retreat, it seems unlikely that it could be corrected without strategic direction. And the latter appears to be beyond the reach of the country’s new authorities.

The liquidation of oil sovereignty: from Chávez to Delcy Rodríguez

The recent reform of the Organic Law on Hydrocarbons (LOH) is not a minor amendment to the previous law, but rather the culmination of a process of gradual neoliberal regression that finally took shape in the substantial repeal of the 2001 law – a cornerstone of the Chavista social project and a historic achievement in the assertion of Venezuelan sovereignty.

The original 2001 law, enacted by Hugo Chávez as an Enabling Law, alongside subsequent reforms in 2006 and 2007, marked the peak of Venezuela’s oil nationalization. It established exclusive state ownership of hydrocarbons in the subsoil, PDVSA’s monopoly on international marketing, majority state control in all joint ventures, state planning of investment, and the priority allocation of revenue to social development.

Throughout the various phases of Maduro’s administration, and in the face of the economic crisis caused by brutal US-led sanctions, revenue-seeking policies were implemented in an effort to secure liquidity and foreign currency, which gradually eroded the Chavista socioeconomic structure. This laid the groundwork for the gradual privatization of national resources, even though commercial control and ownership of the oil remained formally in the hands of the state.

Furthermore, during the 2019–2024 period, Maduro granted operating licenses to Chevron and other foreign corporations that allowed for direct exploitation and marketing in certain areas, setting precedents for private control over production. These agreements, presented as “temporary exceptions” to revive output and alleviate the social burden of sanctions, established the framework of dependency that the 2026 reform ultimately consolidated legally.

The January 2026 reform promoted by the Delcy Rodríguez administration, designed in accordance with the requirements of January 9 Trump administration Executive Order 14373, completes this process of erosion and represents a substantial rollback of the economic foundations of Chavista social transformation. Many of the changes introduced reflect mechanisms imposed under the Anti-Blockade Law (2020) and the Special Economic Zones Law (2022), which loosened restrictions on the private sector’s role, primarily through broad tax exemptions and trade incentives, while the 2026 LOH eliminates any remaining obstacles to private operational control of that sector. Or, in other words: what under Maduro were exceptions designed to circumvent sanctions – particularly pressing in the context of the pandemic and post-pandemic period – are formalized in Rodríguez’s reform to institute open subordination.

First, the exclusive state ownership of hydrocarbons in the subsoil – which the 1999 Constitution reaffirmed as an inalienable principle and which even Maduro formally upheld – has been rendered meaningless. While Article 5 of the 2001 law stated that “hydrocarbons in the subsoil are the property of the Republic,” the 2026 reform establishes that foreign private operators can acquire property rights over production from the moment of extraction, allowing them to market it directly without the state involvement that characterized the original Chavista model. The qualitative difference from the Maduro era is that this direct commercialization is now generalized across the entire sector, and the geographical and temporal restrictions that maintained a prospect of state control have been eliminated.

Second, the reform permanently eliminates the state monopoly on international commercialization. The 2001 law and subsequent reforms stipulated that PDVSA was the only entity authorized to export. The 2026 reform allows Western conglomerates such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Repsol to directly market all or portions of production, thereby undermining the state’s sovereign authority to decide to whom to sell, under what conditions, and at what price. Private companies now determine the destination of shipments, negotiating directly with refiners and distributors, while the Venezuelan state receives only royalties and dividends subject to external control mechanisms.

This commercial subordination is further reinforced by a restrictive framework imposed by Washington: General Licenses 46, 50A, and 52 issued by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) strictly prohibit Venezuelan crude oil from reaching entities based in Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, or Cuba, extending the ban to any company that maintains ties of ownership or control with individuals from those countries. Far from restoring commercial autonomy, the 2026 reform institutionalizes these barriers: while transnational corporations are given carte blanche to negotiate directly with Western refiners, all transactions with Chavismo’s historical partners remain prohibited. The Venezuelan state is reduced to collecting royalties under foreign supervision, with no capacity to direct oil flows toward those markets that for years guaranteed the sustainability of the Bolivarian project. This leads to a situation as deplorable as it is surreal, where the Zionist entity has been able to receive Venezuelan crude without hindrance, while Cuba is left helpless against Washington’s strangulation.

Third, the reform abolishes state control over investment and exploitation. The 2001 law reserved for the state the right to plan investment. The 2026 reform allows private operators to unilaterally determine investment levels, the technology to be used, and reserve policy, eliminating any need for approval from Venezuelan authorities beforehand. Foreign companies acquire the right to import equipment and personnel without restrictions, operating under a regime of fiscal and legal extraterritoriality.

Fourth, the reform dismantles the framework for protecting social investments. The 2001 law stipulated that oil revenues must be allocated primarily to economic and social development. The 2026 reform includes provisions allowing for international arbitration to resolve disputes, prioritizing the protection of private investments over any social claims. Funds derived from oil production are subject to foreign control mechanisms. 

Lastly, the aforementioned OFAC licenses effectively establish an architecture of fiscal subordination that privileges foreign interests, with Venezuelan oil proceeds deposited in US Treasury-run accounts. By accepting these licenses – and with the additional stipulations of the reform – the Delcy Rodríguez administration is effectively subject to mechanisms for external validation of its budgets.

Oil reform and foreign oversight are not isolated processes: they constitute a neocolonial arrangement disguised as economic normalization, which maintains formal sovereignty while relinquishing operational control. In strategic terms, Venezuela has gone from being an actor with a relative capacity to define its energy policy— despite sanctions and threats — to a subordinate whose critical decisions are dictated by the United States. 

Condemning Iran: geopolitical alignment as submission

Structural subordination is also evident in foreign policy. In the face of the recent imperialist aggression against Iran, launched jointly by the United States and the Zionist entity on February 28, 2026, which left more than 200 dead in the first few hours (including 148 girls killed in the bombing of an elementary school in Minab), the Delcy Rodríguez government rushed to abandon its traditional alliance with Tehran. 

In an initial statement, it took a stance condemning both the imperialist aggression and the response of the attacked country, falling into a shameful and ridiculous position of neutrality. This official statement, issued on February 28 stated that the Venezuelan government “condemns and deeply regrets that the military option was taken against Iran” and expressed dismay over the civilian casualties. However, the text then went on to refer to “Iran’s inappropriate and reprehensible military reprisals against targets in various countries in the region.” In doing so, the Delcy Rodríguez administration denied the bombed country the right to self-defense, placing the aggressor and the victim on the same level.

This statement, which Foreign Minister Yván Gil ended up deleting from his social media accounts hours later, marks a definitive break with the anti-imperialist stance that Venezuela had been building for two decades. The condemnation of the response by Tehran – a historic ally of Chavismo and high-level strategic partner since 2022 – shows that alignment with imperialism is now a fait accompli.

The Venezuelan communiqué cannot be understood without considering the context: the complete opening of the oil sector to foreign capital, the aforementioned reception in Caracas of the CIA director, and the subsequent arrival of US Chargé d’Affaires Laura Dogu as a diplomatic representative, along with visits by US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, US Interior Secretary Doug Bergum, and the head of US Southern Command, General Francis Donovan; all within a few weeks, prior to Trump’s own recognition of Delcy Rodríguez as Venezuela’s president.

The Rodríguez administration not only hands over the oil and refuses to stand up to the empire, but also politically legitimizes US hegemony, breaking with the internationalist and popular legacy that Chavismo had always fostered, defended, and pushed forward. The condemnation of the Iranian resistance – which undoubtedly amounts to a condemnation of the entire anti-Zionist Axis of Resistance and all peoples oppressed by the colonial entity – is presented as “international responsibility” and a “commitment to peace.” The new Venezuelan administration thus disguises its surrender of diplomatic sovereignty and buries the solidarity-driven, internationalist Venezuela that Chavismo led, both during Chávez’s and Maduro’s tenures.

Cabral’s Dilemma: betrayal of the Chavista project or class suicide

To fully understand what has happened in Venezuela, it is quite helpful to examine it in light of the political theory of Amílcar Cabral, the independence leader of Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde and one of the most incisive thinkers of African and Third World liberation. Cabral first formulated the concept of “class suicide” in his 1964 message to Guinean militiamen, later developing it in numerous speeches throughout the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in his address, “The Weapon of Theory,” delivered at the First Tricontinental Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, held in Havana in January 1966.

In the context of Guinea-Bissau’s liberation struggle, Cabral further developed this theory by applying it to that specific reality in his work Guinea-Bissau: An African Nation Forged in Struggle, posthumously published in 1974. The Guinean petty bourgeoisie, formed under the Portuguese colonial administration, had to choose between joining the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cabo Verde (PAIGC) and its peasant base, renouncing their privileges as colonial officials, or remaining on the sidelines and eventually collaborating with Portugal. Cabral had no illusions about the difficulties of this choice. The historical dilemma of this petty bourgeoisie, according to Cabral, is strictly binary: “either it betrays the Revolution or it commits suicide as a class.” There is no third way, no middle ground, and no possible compromise. Any attempt to maintain a neutral stance ends, sooner or later, in subordination to imperialism and the betrayal of national interests.

Class suicide did not mean the physical disappearance of individuals, but rather the destruction of their particular class status. It entailed a radical and conscious transformation. As Cabral explained, the petty bourgeoisie had to “renounce the class position it occupies in social life” and “integrate itself with the popular forces – that is, with the workers and the peasants.” In other words: voluntarily abandon their privileges as an intermediate class, cease to be a class separate and distinct from the people, and fully identify with the popular forces as part of a project of national and social liberation. 

The betrayal of the revolution – the other option in this dilemma – occurs when the bourgeoisie preserves its class existence and its intermediary privileges through subordination to imperialism. It does not renounce its position, does not identify with the people, and does not dismantle its networks of privilege. On the contrary, it negotiates its corporate survival with the enemy, becoming a comprador bourgeoisie. This betrayal is not always explicit or conscious. It often presents itself as “realism,” “pragmatism,” or “tacticism.” But its result is always the same: the consolidation of structural dependence and the blocking of any emancipatory project aimed at true sovereign independence, an indispensable requirement for delinking from the imperialist system.

The theory of class suicide has profound methodological implications for political analysis. First, it establishes that national liberation cannot be led by the national bourgeoisie or by the petty bourgeoisie unless they have committed class suicide. Second, it demonstrates that formal independence does not equate to real liberation if the political leadership retains its character as a subordinate intermediary class. Third, it points out that the class struggle continues during the revolutionary process and that the principal contradiction is not always between the people and external colonialism, but also between the people and their own leadership that resists class suicide.

What sets the Venezuelan case apart is that the petty bourgeoisie – whether treacherous or capitulationist – is not the traditional colonial class that Cabral analyzed, but rather a bureaucratic bourgeoisie forged in the very process of revolutionary change. Over two decades of Chavismo, this class has accumulated experience in state administration, built autonomous power networks, developed a distinct corporate identity, and created a social base of support. Class suicide would mean renouncing all this historical accumulation, dissolving into the popular masses, and reconfiguring the project from the ground up by aligning with the proletariat and the communal project. Betrayal, on the other hand, allows for the preservation of bureaucratic and clientelist power structures by adapting them to the new framework of subordination. A bureaucratic bourgeoisie that controls the state and oil revenues has its own material interests that may conflict with a direct confrontation against imperialism.

In the wake of the rapid and radical changes implemented by the Delcy Rodríguez administration that we have described, we can observe with bitterness how the national bourgeoisie has ceased to administer independence – the original purpose of the Chavista project – and has instead come to manage dependence.

All of this is being presented, as one would expect, under the guise of Bolivarian continuity, the preservation of symbols, and rhetoric about historical responsibility, all of which serve to obscure the surrender of oil revenues to imperialist control, demolishing what was once the cornerstone of the Chavista social project. This is accompanied by a rupture or abandonment of historic alliances such as with Iran and Cuba, with national resources destined for the Zionist entity without question, in a shameful capitulation to US interests.

The 2026 oil reform is the key element of this submission: state ownership of oil – a pillar of the sovereign development project – is being dismantled in favor of corporate control and placed at the mercy of the US Treasury. This constitutes a sophisticated form of neocolonial domination because it hinders resistance to the brutal imperial agenda. Indeed, the masses are not facing an enemy in the form of a foreign occupation, but rather an elite that speaks their language, appropriates their symbols and folklore, and maintains a patriotic rhetoric, all while systematically dismantling the core foundations that Chavismo built over decades in its quest for a historic break with dependency.

Conclusion

The history of liberation struggles teaches us that if the revolutionary project is the lighthouse, the revolutionary class must be its operator. As such, its cause must be anchored in a historical strategy capable of guiding even the most difficult tactical retreats. But there can be no tactical retreat without strategy, nor strategy without the material foundations on which to sustain it. Economic independence is not a mere ideological ornament of the revolutionary process: it is its condition of possibility. When a nation’s sources of wealth are handed over to the empire’s management, when the revenue that fueled the social project is subjected to external control, and when the state voluntarily relinquishes the instruments that allowed it to decide on its own development, there is no room left for future strategic maneuvering. What is presented as prudence or realism is nothing more than, at best, the institutionalization of capitulation; at worst, of betrayal. 

Those same processes of national liberation have also shown that no revolution has survived without cadres willing to take on the risks demanded by the confrontation with imperial power. Revolutionary leaders are not called upon merely to manage structures, but to embody a historic will capable of sustaining the conflict to its final consequences. In the early hours of January 3, as the Venezuelan state apparatus sealed its commitment to servile negotiation, those willing to give their lives for that cause were the Venezuelan soldiers and 32 Cuban internationalists who fell defending the presidential residence. And in that event, both brutal and symbolic, lies the essence of the dilemma Cabral articulated decades ago: in the face of imperialism, there is no lasting middle ground between class suicide and betrayal. Everything else – the rhetoric, the symbols, the appeals to tactics – are merely transient ways of naming a decision that, sooner or later, history ultimately reveals.

Joan López and Alejandro Pedregal are members of the Anti-Imperialist Network (AIN), anti-imperialist.net.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Source: El Salto Diario

Note: there have been minor edits to the original version to clarify certain aspects of the oil reform.

In another timeline, in that parallel universe where Venezuela is a normal Latin American country and not a case study of self destruction and democratic retreat, Vladimir Padrino López might have been a good military officer. A native from Caracas, he graduated with honors in the Military Academy in 1984, and as was normal for promising Venezuelan Army officers like him, he was sent to study in the infamous School of the Americas where the United States managed to train the armies of their allied countries. Padrino Lopez was sent later to command an Army post in the border with Colombia, and then came Hugo Chávez.

He was back in Caracas when the crisis of April 2002 allowed Chávez to purge the armed forces and control them as a whole, after promoting the politicization—to his favor, of course—of the military caste. Padrino read the room and focused on rising as a hardcore chavista. By the end of the Chávez years, he was leading the chief of staff of the Army, in the pole position to jump into the highest job an active military officer can get in Venezuela: minister of defense. Nicolás Maduro appointed him as such in October 2014, as well as chief of the FANB’s Strategic Operations Command. 

By then, he was a general-in-chief with four stars on his uniform, but the most important thing is what he did, and what he didn’t. 

Padrino López didn’t stop Colombian guerrillas from controlling villages, rivers, mines and illegal businesses in Venezuela. On the contrary, he helped him to use our territory as a sanctuary that protected them from Colombian soldiers and as a hunting ground for kidnapping and drug trafficking. He didn’t purge military intelligence from Cuban advisors and spies, but let them impose terror in the ranks and prevent the rise of conspirators against Maduro with extreme prejudice. What Padrino López focused on was on lucrative arms trade and cooperation with the Russian and Iranian industrial-military complexes. His most important function for Maduro was to help him to keep FANB in line, to lead the different military tribes around the chavista regime, and to ensure support from the women and men in uniform to an autocratic consolidation—through the illegal Constituent Assembly, and the two illegitimate inaugurations of Maduro in 2019 and 2025.

He was the minister of defense when FANB was tasked with overseeing the Mining Arc, when the protest wave of 2017 was drowned in blood, when FANB deployed with the police the killing squads of the Operación de Liberacion del Pueblo, and when DGCIM became the spearhead of the worst place Venezuela has been in terms of human rights since the military dictatorship of General Marcos Perez Jimenez. This is why you can find the name of Padrino López in several reports on repression and crimes against humanity in Venezuela: he was at the top of the military chain of command responsible for kidnapping, torturing and killing people.

Now he has completed his comeback, with the mission of helping Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez keep stability, to deter potential spoilers from trying to change the post-Maduro order.

The demise of Padrino López has been a rumor for years, as his ascendancy among troops decayed. Thousands of members of the armed forces have been victims of witchhunts or abandoned FANB, by quitting or even deserting, fed up with abuse, low wages, corruption and miserable operational arrest. In January 3, years of preaching about asymmetric war and millions spent on Russian toys did nothing to avoid the capture of Maduro and the bombing of Fuerte Tiuna. Delcy Rodriguez found a pretext to send Padrino to retirement, which was way past due. Naturally, she didn’t do it to punish him for being useless as an army leader, incapable of defending the country and his commander in chief, but because she needed someone she trusts more.

The successor might not be as visible or as well known as Padrino Lopez, but he is not very different. General Gustavo González López is also an alumni of the School of the Americas, a loyal chavista and a longtime member of the Maduro regime’s military elite. Twenty years ago he was already serving in civilian positions, like director of the Caracas Metro, that had nothing to do with his training, and everything to do with his loyalty to Chávez and the chavista (but not only chavista) myth that military officers are good managers because they know how to boss people around and impose order. González López’s organizational abilities, though, were more in the realm of building an efficient repressive apparatus than in running a decades-old public transport system.

He was appointed head of SEBIN, the civilian political police in charge of the dungeons in El Helicoide, during the 2014 repression wave. That meant González López was one of the men who dragged the country down the ladder of poor human rights indicators. Just like Padrino López, he quickly entered the list of Venezuelan high-level officials targeted by international sanctions and investigations. One year later, he became interior minister. Just when an assassination attempt with drones surprised Maduro and his security ring during a military parade in Caracas, and a scandal followed the murder of opposition councilman Fernando Albán in the SEBIN headquarters, González López was dismissed and put aside. 

Now he has completed his comeback, with the mission of helping Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez keep stability, to deter potential spoilers from trying to change the post-Maduro order. González López was appointed chief of the DGCIM and commander of the Presidential Guard just after January 3, and now is at the top of the pyramid. 

This is about loyalty, not about any political transition. We can’t expect justice, reconciliation or any movement towards the restoration of the rule of law with a man like González López heading the Venezuelan military. No one in the barracks or the streets is safer because one symbol of the Maduro regime, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, has been replaced by another.

A longer version of this piece in Spanish was published on Marisela’s Substack.

After the systemic rupture that the US incursion of January 3 represents, chavismo has embarked on its third great metamorphosis, carrying out a profound reengineering in a context of tutelage and transactional pragmatism. In my view, the Venezuelan State is undergoing a deep transformation rather than facing an imminent transition to democracy. Nevertheless, the government of Delcy Rodríguez is pursuing this transformation with remarkable speed and bluntness.

The survival of the chavista system has required the sacrifice of its original forms, forcing a mutation that uses economic opening as social anesthesia and the sophistication of repression as a guarantee of stability.

From the oil embargo on Cuba to microeconomic measures that we will discuss in the following lines, these milestones are the material proof of a power that has chosen to fill itself with realism, and to sacrifice its traditional epic narrative.

The case of Alex Saab and friends

A most scandalous event over which public officials have remained silent is the alleged arrest of Alex Saab. Saab was removed as Minister of Industries and National Production on January 17. Although Delcy initially presented the move as a departure to assume new responsibilities, it ultimately marked the beginning of his demise in Venezuela. According to reports from The New York Times, La Nación, and Infobae, SEBIN agents detained Saab and businessman Raúl Gorrín, the owner of TV network Globovisión, who has long navigated sanctions and power and lost his media and political shield almost simultaneously with the capture of Maduro. The novel element in this second arrest of Saab is that reports describe an operation carried out with the knowledge and cooperation of the FBI. It would appear that the new leadership in Caracas is willing to hand over key figures to US authorities in exchange for validation and stability.

Both men immediately disappeared from the public radar. Two weeks later, the Spanish broadsheet ABC claimed that the Trump administration has demanded judicial cooperation from Delcy regarding nine figures close or formerly close to the government, including Maduro’s son (known as Nicolasito), Tareck El Aissami (arrested by Maduro in 2024) and, of course, Alex Saab and Raúl Gorrín. The report describes Saab as “the man who knows where the money is.” The dismissal on February 23 of Saab’s wife, Camilla Fabri (appointed vice minister for international communication a year earlier) reinforces the hypothesis of Saab’s detention.

In the mining sector, foreign capital has abandoned concessions due to the absence of minimal infrastructure and the suffocating control of armed groups.

In theory, the US would be seeking access to Saab’s testimony and archives in order to finish dismantling the money laundering and drug trafficking networks surrounding Maduro’s inner circle. Following his arrest in Cape Verde in 2020 and a prolonged legal battle in Florida over his alleged diplomatic immunity, Saab was released and sent back to Venezuela in December 2023 through a complex prisoner exchange. Upon arrival, he was granted a high political profile and appointed president of the International Center for Productive Investment, positioning him as the key operator for attracting foreign capital under sanctions.

The Saab-Gorrín case demonstrates that chavismo’s ongoing metamorphosis involves sacrificing the financiers who helped evade sanctions in previous years. Even after leading an intense campaign for Saab’s release in 2023, National Assembly president Jorge Rodríguez has shown no hesitation in serving in a government that makes him disappear on the orders of a foreign power. Ruling chavismo now seeks to present itself before Trump as a renewed, pragmatic actor and, above all, one unified under a centralized command without visible fractures. The official silence surrounding this issue stems from the fact that the capture of strategic allies buys the Rodríguez siblings time to manage the internal divisions this would inevitably generate.

Supervised economic liberalization

Since early January, the government has accelerated decrees and measures of economic opening that were previously unthinkable, such as the Hydrocarbons Law’s reform. The objective is to accelerate economic timelines in order to demobilize political demands. However, while the government is betting on a rapid economic rebound to pre-empt any possibility of opposition reorganization, a deep gap is beginning to emerge between the rhetoric of hope and the reality of purchasing power, which continues to deteriorate.

To assess the supposed implementation of these measures, I spoke with economist Manuel Sutherland to unpack the speculation that currently dominates public debate. According to his analysis, the exchange rate system has not undergone structural change: the allocation of foreign currency remains discretionary. Financial flows reveal a complex triangulation in which oil revenues are deposited in a fund in Qatar and then routed to an account at the US Treasury Department. From there, major banks acquire foreign currency through auctions restricted to the purchase of American goods. This process, executed in an opaque environment by private banks, occurs alongside discussions of tax exemptions for certain goods, such as vehicles.

Contrary to public perception, there has been no acceleration of privatization, while in the mining sector, foreign capital has abandoned concessions due to the absence of minimal infrastructure and the suffocating control of armed groups. What initially appeared to be a fast-tracked path toward economic recovery under American supervision now seems to be advancing at the same pace as, or even behind, political changes. The dissonance that once represented a danger for democratization (rapid economic liberalization coexisting with political stagnation) is not occurring. On the contrary, the slow economic rebound is unable to keep pace with the acceleration of political dynamics, which has gained renewed vigor through the mobilization of relatives of political prisoners. While the economy remains trapped in inertia and opacity, the political chessboard is being shaken by social pressure that the government appears not to have anticipated in its calculations for stability.

Amnesty and softer repression

By managing to adapt to this new scenario, chavismo shows it retains room of maneuver to ensure its permanence. This continuity is guaranteed by opening strategic pressure valves in response to the two main sources of coercion: internal social pressure and external pressure. The tactical softening of repression manifests itself as an unfolding of chavismo toward more sophisticated forms of exercising power. During the opening of the judicial year, the acting president delivered a striking speech announcing an amnesty law. The timeframe established for the law (1999-2025) functions as a symbolic rupture with the era that precedes her. All of this seeks to project renewed leadership based on the pillars of efficient technocracy and a pacifist façade.

The Amnesty Law thus operates as both a pacification mechanism and a transactional trophy for the Trump administration. A trophy meant to reduce the political cost of external pressure without implying any real dismantling of the repressive apparatus. It is a functional mutation that attempts to stabilize the system through a new version of authoritarian peace that can only be challenged if social pressure and mobilization manage to move beyond the mirage of this merely symbolic rupture.

Venezuela has ended up suffocating Cuba more effectively than the Helms-Burton Act.

However, attempts to “unify” the country through this law have had the opposite effect. Instead of extinguishing the spirit of struggle, it has revived it. On February 6, while the amnesty bill was still being debated, National Assembly president Jorge Rodríguez appeared at an infamous detention center before the mothers of political prisoners who were on vigil. Rodríguez established a novel form of blackmail: if the law were approved within a record seven days, their children could be released. None of this happened. The discussion was delayed, and once the law was enacted, the release process proved extremely slow. In addition, new cases of abductions and disappearances have emerged, while those who have been released leave prison without fear and determined to remain in the streets. None of this had been anticipated by Jorge Rodríguez.

This whole process, which is still ongoing, has brought the tacit recognition of political prisoners, the implementation of mass release measures, and the positioning of political prisoners within the public discourse—an issue the Maduro government always preferred to deny.

Oil embargo on Cuba and sales to Israel

The abrupt halt in crude shipments to Cuba—confirmed through maritime tracking by specialized firms—has also not been officially acknowledged by Venezuela. Reuters has been the leading outlet reporting the drop in shipments. According to its investigations, based on internal documents from the state oil company PDVSA and export data, Venezuela has prioritized cargoes destined for companies such as Chevron in order to secure foreign currency flows, leaving supply to Cuba in operational limbo. What is new? The beginning of a phase of energy suffocation for Havana led by Venezuela.

Despite the evidence of reduced shipments, neither Caracas nor Havana has issued statements acknowledging a suspension. What has been officially reported, however, is the dismantling of Cuban missions in Venezuela. Official Gazette No. 6,885 published decrees ordering the intervention, restructuring, and liquidation of emblematic social programs such as Mission Barrio Adentro and the Housing Mission.

In addition, international correspondents in Caracas, such as Sarah Kinosian, have reported the departure of Cuban medical personnel and military advisers. These reports cite internal sources in ministries and testimony from health workers who have been notified that their contracts are ending and that they must return immediately to the island.

Within a span of only a few minutes, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry published and then deleted from all its platforms a statement expressing solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran following recent bombings.

How long can the rupture between Caracas and Havana remain hidden in discourse? And what implications does it hold for the Latin American left, which has remained silent about Venezuela’s authoritarian drift in order to preserve a utopian narrative? The only official source regarding the oil embargo on Cuba came from Miguel Díaz-Canel, who admitted that “we are going to live through difficult times” and announced a plan to deal with “acute fuel shortages,” acknowledging that no crude has arrived since December. As one of history’s paradoxes, Venezuela has ended up suffocating Cuba more effectively than the Helms-Burton Act.

Another shift that also lacks official confirmation is the presumed resumption of oil sales to Israel, reported only by Bloomberg and maritime tracker Kpler. Although the government has dismissed these reports as fabricated news through its communications minister, the flow of roughly 200,000 barrels toward the Haifa refinery suggests a reality consistent with the scenario of tutelage and its geopolitical ramifications (Venezuela severed relations with Israel in 2009).

The erosion of the anti-imperialist narrative

An episode that occurred on March 1 offers a window into the speed with which the government has decided to push through a compliant policy shift and how it appears to be redefining its strategic ties. Within a span of only a few minutes, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry published and then deleted from all its platforms a statement expressing solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran following recent bombings.

The episode suggests a latent tension between the discursive inertia of certain officials and the logic of tutelage guiding the government’s current decisions. More than a mere coordination error, the incident could be interpreted as a symptom of constant monitoring of Venezuelan foreign policy by the US embassy in Caracas, or of unclear internal guidelines regarding this shift, where preserving negotiation channels with Washington must prevail over historical ideological loyalties.

The novelty of this shift lies not only in the rhetorical distancing, but in the fact that the internal fissure has become visible. For the first time in decades, the opportunity cost of maintaining a symbolic alliance with Tehran appears to be perceived by the political leadership as greater than the benefit of ideological consistency. This exercise in digital cleansing reinforces the hypothesis of a system that will prioritize the stability of financial flows guaranteed by American tutelage over the rhetoric of confrontation, marking a drastic departure from the alliances that once sustained chavismo.

The reality is that there has been a change in governmental behavior. Not only has the government implemented measures that clash with the historic conduct of a regime attached to the ideological agenda of the revolution, but it has also shown clear difficulty in the communication management of these measures. This suggests they may respond to a strategy of obedience to the occupying power while exploiting certain windows of opportunity for remaining in power.

Delcy Rodríguez’s government knows that exposing the measures recently adopted could generate even deeper cracks within the internal structures of chavismo. So now, in many instances, we just have silence.